something interesting i heard
I was playing a small Hold'em tourny at a Jack and Jill I went to on Saturday, and this guy starts talking about how he has this buddy that runs an online gambling site and how he has it rigged, like, his BlackJack game is 60% house favoured and he can skew the poker tables to friends of his favour. I immidiately called bullshit and said no way, and he went on to say how he lives in this foriegn country and can't get busted for it, I still called bullshit, if only to stop him from discouraging people there from playing online, which some were talking about. Obviously this guy doesn't run one of the big premiere sites, but what's stopping someone from starting up a rigged site, other than ethics i guess? It's reason to stick to the major sites i guess..
Comments
In terms of believability, the story lost me right away when someone was supposedly bragging about running a rigged site. The last thing in the world a person with half a brain would do while running a rigged online site is tell anyone about it.
The story does have some potential, and could easily be retooled by:
1. Claiming this was an online site which has since closed. (To add flavour: "The owner(s) have made enough money to retire. And then some!")
2. Introducing an espionage angle as to how it was discovered that the site was rigged. These days, spy action is hot!
Of course, the story has its positives too. The "friend of a friend" aspect allows for a vague description of details, and the degree of separation necessary to fend off any further questions about it with a simple "I dunno." Although this is the aspect that lost me in the first place, this is a great technique to use if you've already got someone on the hook and they're looking for more details.
Notice that the story has now reached the ultimate in obscurity: friend of a friend of a friend on an internet forum.
Also a great part of the storytelling was to incorparate a house-beats-player game such as Blackjack into the mix. People can easily accept the fact that a Blackjack game can be rigged in favour of the house. Why? Histroical personal experience. Legitimate Blackjack already is a game which is rigged in favour of the house. Another plus to including Blackjack in the story telling is that it's pretty easy for the average person to understand how you can lose if a Blackjack game is rigged against the players, but to have to go into exactly how Poker games can profit from being rigged is much more complicated. The latter can also be deflected by the "friend of a friend" thing of course.
All in all, I'll give it 2 of 5 stars as rigged online poker stories go.
Nothing except the startup costs really, if they are not concerned about long-run profitability.
It's one of the reasons that I usually recommend sticking with the well-established, high player traffic sites. There are important lower level things to be concerned with too. For example, I'm more concerned that an independent1 startup and/or low traffic site will simply close up (whether voluntarily or involuntarily) and I'd have no way to collect my deposits and winnings.
ScottyZ
1There are plenty of startup sites which are simply skins of existing big networks. By "independent", I mean startup sites other than this kind.
i agree with all of that, the guy said it is still running, but isn't one of the *MAJOR* sites like party or golden palace, well duh. I didnt want to get into a fight with the guy, as far as i know his buddy DID tell him he had some rigged site going, but I was sceptical to say the least and told everyone it was extremely unlikely it was true, i think the guy was getting mad at me so i let it go.
don't for a second think i'm trying to pass this off as a story of mine or anything, i just thought it was funny and it got me thinking about what would stop someone from setting up a rigged site, obviously the "favourable poker" is a bit of a stretch and would be quite complicated, but pushing the blackjack edge is something feasible.